What’s in a Name?—M.G.Sondraal
What’s in a Name?
Naming characters is hard for me. Unless the name foreshadows what is to come or gives specific insight into the character like in my urban fantasy work, is a name that important? For general fiction and mysteries, I don’t think so.
When I first watched the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas, a dramatization of the life of Charles Dickens when he wrote A Christmas Carol, the most fascinating revelation for me was his imagined writing process. I watched him collect names and descriptions from the people he met as we all do as writers. In this fiction, only when he settled on the name for his character did it emerge fully formed and ready to be written.
It is the complete opposite for me. My characters are established well before a name is provided. I have on a couple of occasions written entire novels with character names of triple consonants. (XXX, YYY, ZZZ can be found and replaced with a few keystrokes later. Single or double letter placeholders lead to unbelievable problems as the computer will add the chosen name in the middle of words. Don’t make that mistake.)
If the novel occurs in a specific country, use of ethnic names provides authenticity for the story. I confess unfamiliar names I generally skip over them when reading making no attempt to sound them out, so similarly spelled names are a challenge and can lead to confusion for people like me, so I am mindful of that.
If writing historical fiction, one must plumb the depths of most popular names of that time, often sourced from religious texts. Even with modern-day tales, Ethel is an acceptable name for an octogenarian, but not a newborn as naming convention has changed. Now, of course, splicing of two names together to create a new one, spelling a recognized name uniquely, or using common objects as names (River, Apple, Blanket come to mind) are acceptable in the population, if not in my writings.
Why is that?
Firstly, I am a curmudgeon and resist trends that I consider foolish. I name characters as I did my children, who have names that work for both a child and an adult and are acceptable as the Prime Minister of this country should that be their goal.
Secondly, though of equal importance, without attaching too much significance to a name, they should be short and not prone to misspelling just for ease of reducing unnecessary errors in the manuscript. If they can be typed in with only one hand on the keyboard, all the better. D.M.K. Ruby has a fondness for flower names, violating my rule of not using common objects as names, and are too long, too likely misspelled, and require two hands on the keyboard. She and I argue about her naming conventions with laughter and love.
I often solicit assistance from friends and family when attempting to replace XXX with an actual name. Some family members are permanently banned from advising me after their insistence that Boaty McBoatface was ideal for one of my precious characters.
Perhaps I do care about the names at least a little.